Utilising tablets and one-to-one coaching to create classroom videos for teacher development in India

Abstract

This paper describes an initiative that was employed in preparing for the professional filming of the video element of TESS-India, an Open University-led, OER-based teacher development programme in India. In the absence of teachers who were familiar with the text-based resources that the videos were intended to complement, an intensive one-to-one coaching relationship was established between paired Indian teacher educators and teachers within four government schools over the two-week period before the filming took place. Rather than specifying in advance the content of the lessons to be filmed, the expectation was that this should reflect the natural point reached in the school syllabus, enhanced by the pedagogic principles underpinning the TESS-India programme as a whole. The coaching process included a joint review of the teacher’s evolving classroom practice, as captured by the teacher educator on a tablet during regular lesson observations. These tablet-based reflective sessions, which informed the teacher’s planning of the subsequent day’s lessons, continued until the day of filming. The resulting commentary-enhanced videos, which show English language and other subject teachers genuinely exploring the integration of new practices in their lessons, have proved both useful and inspiring to the many practitioners who have since viewed them